This week there are no tips, no types of screw classifications, nor lists of sexual achievements. The reason: I have received a lot of requests in public and private in recent weeks asking me to stop theorising and to speak once and for all about sexual practice itself. So, in response to the public’s demands, it will be in this article when I finally stick my neck out and describe a personal experience which I thought could effectively act as a beacon or guide to our readers, as much as or more than the articles I usually write here. Because there is nothing like one’s own experiences. Especially when it comes to sex. But let’s get down to business:

At the beginning of last year I signed up for the gym. As for most people, this was my new year’s resolution. What else? I finished the three or four remaining pieces of “Roscón de Reyes”, the last two bars of chocolate nougat and also the lemon “polvorones” (which are the ones that nobody ever eats) and I ran (well, I walked kind of quickly, let’s not exaggerate) to sign up at the nearest gym to my house (why look for one further away? That would be making twice the effort unnecessarily and I already had enough to deal with). I filled out the form they gave me at reception, I paid the first fee and went directly to a bar (the closest one I found as well) since I didn’t want to overdo it the first time.

My memory of the following weeks is a bit blurred. I cheated, I recognise it: as my purpose was, verbatim “to sign up for the gym”, I never actually went. However, I went quite a bit more often to the bar that was right next to it. Until one day she came through the door: that freshly showered, redheaded girl who came out the gym and went to the same bar as me to have an isotopic drink after the hard exercise. It was love at first sight. First, to make myself visible, I chose to leave the darkest area of the pub, where I normally drowned my sorrows in alcohol, go to the bar and, instead of with a sparkling drink, mix my whiskey with the same isotopic drink she regularly drank. After a few weeks, I realised she would never notice me with this strategy, that I should abandon those alcoholic habits of mine, pluck up the courage and go to the gym if I wanted that gorgeous redhead to notice me, or at least look at me with a bit less contempt and disgust than she usually did in the bar.

Said and done. I bought a new tracksuit (the one I wore in the house didn’t look sexy enough to me, as it had little balls on it) and I used my gym pass for the first time. The first day was very tough, really tough. Also the second one. And the third one. And so on for the first seven months, until I started noticing that my body was, incredibly, starting to improve, just like my health. In the same way, I chose to change alcohol for isotonic drinks radically and definitively. My mood changed, I even became politer and even smiled at the car park attendant. Everybody told me, even the doorman in my building, who I had never said hello to in my life and whose unamusing jokes I now always laughed at. The only thing that was wrong was that the redhead didn’t pay me any attention, no matter how much I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. And it was she alone who had been the reason for the change in my routines, all now directed at a healthier life in which having sex with her had been, and continued to be, the reason for my existence.

Every day, when I finished my workout (my trainer said that I was already at the highest –pro-level, and that if I kept up that pace I could seriously think about competing in some aerobic sport in the next Olympics), I invariably looked for my redhead all over the main hall of that gym in which her beauty prevailed unrivalled. But to no avail: she still ignored me, even though my torso was the most well-formed of all those who paid the fee there.

Until one happy day, I finally destroyed the treadmill (it was the belt that didn’t withstand my pace and not the other way round) and then, as she was nearby and when the machine exploded the screws almost hit her in the face, we started talking. “You have muscles everywhere!” she said. “They’re costing me money. This gym is very expensive.” “You can say that again, I had to sell my car to keep coming.” “It’s daylight robbery, it’s not right.” The connection we formed in the conversation was amazing. I was drooling all over my face while the redhead’s smile lit up the main hall of the gym. And of course, as we were full of adrenaline after so much exercise, embarrassment remained crouching under our sweaty skin. She told me that that day she had done “dozens of burpees, dozens of snatches, scores of muscle-ups, and a long list of exercises with English names that sounded meaningless to me. “If you don’t tell me in my own language I don’t understand”, I answered. “Actually, what I do is to horse around as much as I can and when my muscles are about to burst I go and relax in the spa.”

Mentioning the spa was a very good idea. In less than five minutes the two of us were there, with our towels, waiting for those annoying people who were swimming to piss off and leave us alone. Not long after, that’s exactly what happened. All I had to do was to shout that there was a fire in the main hall of the gym and everybody had to evacuate the place immediately or they would burn under their own responsibility. It was hilarious. Some members came out the showers stark naked running like headless chickens. The redhead and I laughed long and loud and, luckily, the thrill and excitement of the moment made us start touching our bodies (she mine and I hers), at last, without the disapproving looks of the rest of the members. We relaxed in the bubbles of the jacuzzi until the redhead suggested getting out and looking for somewhere drier since lately she had been suffering badly from rheumatism, she said. We finished the job in the dressing rooms, which were empty because of the evacuation I mischievously caused. Her orgasms (she had two and I had none unfortunately, probably because I was nervous) are forever etched on my retina as one of the most vibrant sexual experiences in my life (although, to be honest, I haven’t had many).

Finally, before finishing this week’s article, I would like to make it clear that, although it may appear so, none of the above is invented (though perhaps some details may be a little exaggerated: the redhead was not really that pretty and her smile did not fill the gym hall with that much light). Anyway, I won’t say goodbye without telling you the end of my story which, like all those involving love, is just like the reader is probably imagining: I never saw that redhead again. I miss her every time I go to the gym. I can no longer destroy aerobic or anaerobic machines while I glance at her, I can no longer complain about how expensive the gym fees are to anyone who really understands me, I no longer use that spa as if it was my own and, above all, I no longer alarm the gym users with fake fire warnings.

I will never forget her. The attraction I felt for that redhead changed my life. Because there is nothing like sex to make one’s habits healthier.

What about you? Do you have any experience with little glances in the gym that got out of control?